Writing a Cover Letter

I am passionate about storytelling and narrative based animation. Characters are central to my practice, and I feel are strongly orientated to a younger audience. I think that the animation currently being produced for children by Brown Bag Films is unique and exciting. And I believe that my interest in storytelling and character are well suited to the diversity of the studio. I am primarily focussed on 2D animation, in particular frame by frame. I have experience in Adobe Animate, Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere. I also engage in the preproduction process, in particular character design and storyboarding.

Mike's talk on developing a Creative CV

Mike's talk on developing a creative CV was incredibly useful. I felt like my knowledge before hand was rather limited. I had written and updated CVs before but they were not for the purpose of finding work in the industry. I learnt that writing creative CVs is very different from writing Creative CVs, mainly because the aspects of a CV that I would talk up most prominently is often pushed to the side in a Creative CV. For example, In learnt I did not need to state all my GCSEs or A levels and any other work  experience I have gained that is not creative need not be talked about until the very bottom of the CV.

There were other things that surprised me. Mike advised that we put time and attention into the section in which I talk about my hobbies and interests. This is a part of the CV I am aware of and do always make sure to include, however before this I would give it little time for writing and would tend to leave it till last. Mike talked about how my interests and hobbies are actually more important than I thought and often a unique selling point. Sometimes people have been hired based on having similar interests with people who already work at that studio which surprised me yet also made sense, if you are going to be working closely with a bunch of likeminded people then shared interests is important.

Light Night One Second Animation

We were set a brief by Annabeth to develop a one second animation to be showcased at Leeds Light Night 2016 in Leeds Market. This brief I found to be a very exciting opportunity. One second is no time at all, particularly if the animation is animated on twos, therefore I felt like the animation could be as complex as I wanted. I had the idea to therefore animate a jump but on each individual frame is a different person in each stage of the jump. I decided to draw each person by hand and draw from photographs of famous people.

Although I'm still really glad that I went ahead with creating an animation with this idea and like that it was a gamble, I'm not sure how successful the final product was visually due to a short an amount of time each person was onscreen for.

Nonetheless, seeing all our one second animations as a sequence on four big screens at Leeds Market blew me away and I feel that as a sequence the one second animations were very successful.

Caricaturing

Outside of animating I have always done caricatures on the side, usually not paid, they have mostly been for peoples birthdays and they have rarely been of people I know, usually I have caricatured famous people and these caricatures have often taken a while to produce.

The above was a live brief that was posted on the LCA Student Collaborations page on Facebook and around college. Originally I took little notice of the brief, focussing more on the animation I was producing. But I received advise from numerous peers that I would be an ideal candidate and that i should definitely go for it. Initially I was skeptical as I hadn't caricatured in a while and had rarely ever done live caricatures. I was encouraged that this would be a good thing to put on my CV so decided to go for it, they liked my work and I was hired to caricature people at the presentation. 

In preparation for the presentation I caricatured people I knew by allowing myself ten minutes to draw them with pen straight onto paper.

The live caricatures at the event went very well and I received very positive feedback that my caricatures were very successful. This experience was very rewarding as it showed me that outside of animation, caricaturing is a great thing to do on the side, furthermore this experience allowed me to gain future potential clients as they said that if I were needed again, they would contact me.

Since then I have tried to keep caricaturing people and putting these caricatures into my portfolio and having them as part of my online presence.

New Business Cards

I had created business cards digitally in second year but I felt that upon reflection, I did not give enough time to these business cards and they do not look as aesthetically pleasing or interesting enough to warrant me ordering at least fifty of them. I decided to have another go at it. Where I went wrong last time is I feel I was too concerned about making the business cards look good on a graphic design logo when what I should have been doing was showcasing my work. The best business cards I've seen and collected at Thoughtbubble from illustrators and other artists always stand out and reflect instantly who they are and what their techniques and processes are as practitioners. I needed my business cards to do the same, give someone a clear idea as to who I am instantly through the image on the front.

I used a background i had created previously for my Processes and Production animation Swinging Through Time. I felt that visually the image is very successful as it shows my line-work and a use of colour and shading. Furthermore, so it would not distract attention away from my name I reduced the opacity. When I received the business cards from Moo Print, I was very satisfied with them and feel they are of a professional standard.

Tokyo Animation Trip: Studio Ghibli Museum

Visiting the Studio Ghibli Museum was an incredible experience. I have loved every film Studio Ghibli have created since I first watched Spirited Away and it's safe to say they are probably my favourite animation studio in the world. Walking around the studio was an incredibly rewarding experience. A particularly amazing part of the museum was Miyazaki's workspace.

Not only was this just an incredibly fascinating room to be in as a fan because I was able to witness how some of my favourite animated movies had been created literally from the drawing board. But this was also an incredibly useful experience as an animator because it inspired me with my own work. While we were in the room, Annabeth pointed me to the bookshelf next to his desk. I hadn't noticed what was on the shelves since I was so transfixed by everything else going on. But what was on the shelves was tons and tons of books that Miyazaki and other Ghibli animators would use for reference. For example, there were books on planes, and books on engineering. Furthermore, these weren't small books either, they were big encyclopedia size books dedicated to a subject as specific as horses. This showed me that the true intricacies of Miyazaki's work do not just occur when he puts pen to paper, but long before that in the initial research stages of an animation project.

This got me to evaluate how I think when it comes to reference. Usually if I'm animating and need reference of a horse for example, I would type 'horse' into Google images. Well, essentially Miyazaki does a similar thing but it was evident that they would be a lot more open with their research. this inspired me to not keep my referencing limited to the internet, if I truly want good referencing i should look in books or elsewhere.

I made so many discoveries in this one room that it is hard for me to move on and talk about the rest of the museum. Another discovery I made is on the rough animation cells themselves.

The animators do not just draw the outline of a character on the layout paper, but they also draw the shading lines as well. Up till this point I would colour a character first in block colour, then add shading on after thinking that was the correct way to do it. Now I've discovered this technique it's completely changed the way I think about shading a character.

Smashed Vinyl: Issue One

Over summer and basically for four months my friend Ewan was working on the first print issue of Smashed Vinyl and as the art director for the platform, there was a lot of content I needed to create. The first issue featured a variety of articles written from different contributors and interviews with bands such as Deap Vally, The Tuts, Dog Party and Dilly Dally.

Pullout Poster

The first thing I created for the print issue was the pullout poster. I had seen this feature in other magazines/newspapers previously and we both agreed it would be a good idea to have something that the reader could pull out and hang up as a poster. For the two page spread we had the idea that the image could be of a bar fight featuring tons of famous musicians. 

The image took a long time to create as each musician had to be individually drawn by hand in a sketchbook then composed together on top of the bar background on Photoshop. The reason for this was there was simply too much going on to create on one piece of paper. Once the image had been finalised and Ewan was satisfied with it, I was able to publicise it. Ewan was very specific with me that I should not put the full thing online until the magazine is realised which to me made total sense but as a practitioner, I also knew that I had spent a lot of time on this so needed to promote it somehow. That is when I decided to only release certain parts of the image on Instagram.

Each day I released a part of the image featuring a different musician with the description 'Bar Brawl' until we could release the full image when the magazine came on sale.

Front Cover

It was also up to me to develop the front cover. While this was not as complicated as the two page spread, this was still a complicated process. The magazine contained an interview with the band Deap Vally so we knew we wanted them to be the main focus point.

I used Photoshop to put the front cover together. This was a complicated process as I needed to make sure it looked professional and I rarely work with print. Ewan put together all of the inside pages, now he is not a graphic designer and has never used Photoshop. All the articles and imagery in the magazine was put together literally by cutting and sticking together with prittstick. While this could look very cheap it actually gave the magazine a nice grungy handmade look. When so much print I feel being produced recently looks incredibly neat and polished, I like the handmade charm our magazine has.

Marketing

Once the magazine was ready to be sold to the public, I was able to publicise all the work I had created for it. I sent the drawing I did for the front cover of Deap Vally to the band and they replied positively.

Ewan put the magazine up for sale on the website Bigcartel.com. Here, people could purchase the magazine for 2.50 and lots of other merchandise with it.

It's safe to say everyone involved with the development of this magazine put their hearts and souls into it but upon seeing the final product it was evident that it was worth it. Furthermore, while I am primarily marketing myself in the industry as an animator, I feel like this experience is a very good thing to put on my creative CV as it shows that I have also had experience with print as well and am not a one trick pony.

Applying for work at Kilogramme Animation Leeds

I emailed the animation studio Kilogramme to ask about work. The work they produce is to me incredibly visually interesting and I love the diversity in animation processes and techniques. Their website really stands out visually. On the very first page, loads of the work they've produced is instantly on display so anyone can get a very good idea as to the sort of things they produce.

From watching their showreel it was evident that much of the work they create is very diverse. Yet all the animation is consistently smooth. Throughout, the character designs are very visually appealing whether they've been created in 2D or 3D. I also felt like even though the use of 3D animation was evident, there appeared to be plenty of 2D character animation of which I felt matched my skill sets.

I remembered Martin's advice that I shouldn't just email the contact email on the website, I should find out exactly who I need to contact by calling first. So that's what I did and then was given the email of the right person to pass my work onto. This was an initially nerve-wracking experience, particularly because I had not done it before. this was completely my own fault, deciding to concentrate on the work I was creating at university and developing my showreel. But now I've sent my first applying for a job email, this will hopefully get the ball rolling.

Creating a Website

An online presence is a very important part of marketing myself in the animation industry. I decided to setup a personal website with the intention of it being a place where all my best work is stored an easy to view for anyone. I had created websites in the past but this was before I went to university so my strategy was not particularly ideal or professional. Furthermore, the websites I had used in the past to attempt to create a website were often not particularly aesthetically pleasing and often looked too visually simplistic.

My friend had developed a website not so long ago for his new music magazine Smashed Vinyl. I had created some of the assets for the website including the logo and page headings. My friend was in no way a graphic designer or had a particularly strong visual eye yet he was able to create a website that I felt was visually very successful.

He had used the website building site Wix so I decided to do the same. Developing the website was fairly simple. First and foremost I wanted to create a site that was above all simple to use and simple in design.

On the homepage, I placed my showreel, that way if I was ever in the middle of networking and wanted to show someone some of my work, my best work would be the first thing they see on the site. The other pages I put on the website was my work including all the animations I've created at university and all the work I've created outside of university as well.

I also created an About page of which contained all the important information including a description of my skill set, my contact details and links to me on social media.

Upon reflection I feel the website is very successful. It's visually simple yet interesting and most importantly looks like it's been created by me yet also looks professional. I regret to say that in the months since it's creation I have failed to keep the website regularly updated. This is not good since I have a blog, but after speaking to fellow animator Craig who also has a website of which I feel is of a very professional standard, he informed me that it might not be worth even having a blog if I need to keep my university blog regularly updated. 

Visiting Professional: Fraser Maclean

We were visited by the animation layout artist Fraser Maclean. The experience was incredibly rewarding and insightful. Without my realisation, Maclean had written the book Setting the Scene.

The book is all about layout art in animation and is incredibly informative about staging in animation. Fraser worked on storyboards on the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I found this part of his career particularly fascinating because it was only up till recently, I believed the animation in that film was created in 3D. When in actual fact, all the animation was created in 2D and then the shadows were individually painted on cells. This sounded like an unbelievably painstaking process but to me I feel entirely worth it. His work on that film may be viewed as a very small part of the film, yet is still a necessary part of which added to the quality of the film.

His outlook on his career and that of animation in general I found to be incredibly enlightening. He said that his contribution to the animation industry will be remembered as but 'a drop in the ocean' and yet he is incredibly satisfied with that. I got the impression from the way he was talking to us that he does not have the desire to be at the front of a project like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He is happy to be a cog in the machine. This inspired me because I felt like this is basically what I want my work in the animation industry to be like. There was a time where I wanted to direct animated films, and a small part of me probably would like to still do that. But now that aspiration has faded slightly and if I would direct anything I would want it to be on a far smaller scale. That idea of being part of something bigger has recently sounded more and more appealing. 

Fraser's career path also appealed to me because I just generally really liked the work he created on films such as Tarzan and Space Jam of which was a part of my childhood and an inspiration for taking an interest in animation.

I even really like the work he's created on smaller commercial projects, an example of this being the Weetabix bullets commercial. The character designs were incredible and visually the advert was very impressive. I admired how Fraser talked up commercial work. It was like experiencing a wake up call. I have never really been that open to commercial work, often associating it with 'selling out' but after studying animation for the past three years I now understand how big apart Capitalism is of animation and how necessary an evil it is. Studios produce commercial work so they can then make their passion projects.